You knew this day was coming and now it’s arrived: after a few mentions in previousposts, Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo (1984) has finally, officially invaded Soundtrack Saturday.
Released only seven months after the first Breakin’, Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo (FYI: You can’t just say “Breakin’ 2.” The “Electric Boogaloo” must always follow. It’s a rule.) brings back our heroes from the first film — Kelly (Lucinda Dickey), Ozone (Adolfo “Shabba-Doo” Quinones), and Turbo (Michael “Boogaloo Shrimp” Chambers) — who use their breakdancing skills to try and stop a greedy land developer from tearing down their beloved community center.
When we join our heroes, we find that Kelly is working as a dancer and apparently hasn’t seen her buddies Ozone and Turbo in a while. She decides she misses them, so she makes a visit to Miracles, the community center where they work. Turns out a developer wants to bulldoze it in order to build a shopping center. Ozone and a few of the other volunteers, including Byron (Harry Caesar), the man who runs Miracles, go to City Hall and find out from the city commissioner that they have 30 days to raise enough money to save and renovate the center or the developer will have his way and the building will come down.
Ozone, Turbo, and Kelly, along with the other volunteers and kids who use the center, decide to try and raise money by holding a car wash. When that endeavor doesn’t raise enough funds, they decide to throw a big street festival to raise more money. Later, as the group is doing maintenance on the community center, Kelly tells Ozone she’s up for the lead in a show in Paris. He questions her loyalty to the community center and whether or not she’ll stick around to help save it.
You don’t know how badly I want to slap the words “Electric Boogaloo” onto the end of Ghostbusters II (1989). Actually, I think any movie sequel whose title ends with the number two should have “Electric Boogaloo” tacked on.
Think of all the possibilities. Grease 2: Electric Boogaloo. The Godfather Part II: Electric Boogaloo. Or my favorite, Kill Bill Vol. 2: Electric Boogaloo.
But I digress. Then again, I didn’t really start anything from which to digress, did I? Sorry about that — my brain crossed the streams. (Thank you, thank you. I’m here all week.)
I’ll bet you’re wondering why I’m writing about Ghostbusters II when I haven’t written about the first Ghostbusters yet. Well, first of all, the sequel’s soundtrack is out of print and harder to find than the original’s. Second of all, this soundtrack has BOBBAAAYYY!!! (if you don’t speak cracked-out Whitney, I’m referring to Bobby Brown) and Run-D.M.C. on it. Also, after the serious tone of last week’s post, I wanted to write about something silly. And finally, because I’m still in disbelief that Hollywood’s going to make “Ghostbusters III.“ (I know Pete from Ickmusic and Jason Hare are disappointed that this post isn’t about Short Circuit 2 or Cocoon: The Return, but I hope they’ll get over it.)
As was the case with many people who grew up in the ’80s, John Hughes’s films were an integral part of my childhood and coming-of-age. And on August 6, when I read the news that he’d died suddenly of a heart attack, I was deeply saddened, not only because he was the first writer and director who really inspired me, but because the chance of one last really great John Hughes film being made was gone, too.
Since I first saw Sixteen Candles(1984) at the age of seven, I’ve been a loyal consumer of Hughes’s films. Though I’ve seen almost all of the movies he wrote, directed, and/or produced, good or bad, the ones I love the most are The Breakfast Club(1985), Pretty in Pink(1986), Weird Science (1985), Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986), Some Kind of Wonderful (1987), She’s Having a Baby (1988), and, of course, Sixteen Candles. They’re the ones I connected with the most. They’re the ones that had female characters I wanted to emulate and male characters I hoped actually existed in the real world (well, except for Weird Science’sChet, played by Bill Paxton). They’re the ones that featured the best music I’d never heard until I saw them.
Looking at the above list, I can’t help but think, “One of these things is not like the other.” To this day I can’t fully explain why I like She’s Having a Baby so much, since the desire for marriage and children is something I can’t identify with at all. I think it’s that it was the first Hughes movie I’d seen whose tone was noticeably more mature than the previous movies’, and I liked that I understood it, even though I was only 11. Also, I think it has one of the best, and most overlooked, soundtracks of any of his films. I don’t want to talk about She’s Having a Baby too much here since I plan to do a full post on it in the future, but I felt I needed to explain why it shows up alongside Hughes’s most beloved teen films as one of my favorites.
Now, I’m sure you’ve already read plenty of tributes since August 6, some focusing on the incredible, memorable music in Hughes’s films, and you may be reading this thinking, “Another one?” But I couldn’t not do a special Soundtrack Saturday post in his honor, since this column wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for John Hughes and his movies.
It was during a viewing of Pretty in Pink a few years ago, when I was still writing my old blog, Looking at Them, that I decided I wanted to write about out-of-print, incomplete, or forgotten soundtracks from my favorite movies — mostly because I’d always lamented that some of the best songs in Pretty in Pink never made it to the official soundtrack album. Thus, Soundtrack Saturday was born.
Last Friday, I saw my 25th Tori Amos show since 1996. Yes, I said 25th show. That may sound excessive, but believe me, that’s peanuts compared to the number of shows some of my friends and fellow Tori fans have seen.
I saw my first Tori show in August of 1996 in Dayton, Ohio during her extensive “Dew Drop Inn Tour” in support of the incredible Boys for Pelealbum. This was before I had any kind of regular Internet access, so the only way I knew about the show was hearing on the radio that tickets were on sale. I took a friend who wasn’t a big Tori fan and who spent a good chunk of the show out in the hall or in the bathroom, but that didn’t stop me from enjoying the show immensely. I was awestruck by her performance and immediately decided that the next time she toured, I was going to see as many shows as possible
During the “Plugged ‘98 Tour,” which supported her fourth album, From the Choirgirl Hotel, I saw four amazing shows. The show I saw in Dayton proved to be another significant one for me, as I met Tori for the first time at the before-show meet and greet (these meet and greets have been a staple on “Tori Tour” for many, many years). After that, she could’ve gotten on stage and played the theme song from Green Acres twenty times in a row and I would’ve still been over the moon. I had so much fun that day, spending most of it camped out in front of the venue waiting for Tori to arrive, meeting and hanging out with some fantastic people. In fact, meet and greets became an integral part of my tour experience over the years. And even though I haven’t done one since 2003, I am glad that they gave me the opportunity to meet some of my dearest friends, who I still talk to regularly and see at shows I attend. (more…)
Not long ago, I was digging through a cabinet full of VHS tapes, looking for this week’s movie, Chasing Amy(1997), which I honestly haven’t watched in years. I was inspired to find it and watch it after listening to Kevin Smith and Jason Lee both discuss it on Kevin Pollak’s Chat Show recently. I’ve been meaning to get it on DVD, but I’m a total cheapskate, so I haven’t committed to spending the money to buy it.
As I watched the movie in all its ten-year-old, VHS-taped-from-cable glory, I started wondering if it had a soundtrack album, and if so, was it still in print? Turns out there never was an official soundtrack. How about that? So I decided to find what I could for a Soundtrack Saturday post. And here it is.
Chasing Amy is a love story as only Kevin Smith could tell it, the tale of the unlikely romance between two comic book artists: Holden McNeil (Ben Affleck), a straight man, and Alyssa Jones (Joey Lauren Adams), a lesbian woman. The two first meet at a comic con that Holden and his best friend, fellow artist Banky Edwards (Jason Lee), are attending to promote their comic, Bluntman and Chronic. Holden is instantly attracted to Alyssa upon being introduced to her by their mutual friend, gay, militant, black cartoonist Hooper X (Dwight Ewell).
But not long after their first meeting, Holden learns she’s gay, which freaks him out a little at first. Eventually, though, he warms up to Alyssa, and the two become fast friends. They start spending a lot of time together, which bugs the shit out of Banky — he just can’t understand why Holden would devote so much time to a woman who doesn’t want to fuck him.
Very recently, I collected almost all the songs from the soundtracks of National Lampoon’s Vacation(1983) and National Lampoon’s European Vacation (1985). I knew I wanted to write about one of the two this week, but couldn’t decide which one. So I asked my tweeps and Facebook friends to pick one or the other, not telling them why I made the request.
Winning with almost 100 percent of the vote was European Vacation. Some of my pals provided their favorite quote from the movie along with their vote, the most popular being, “Dad, I think he’s gonna pork her!” I can’t ignore what the people want, so the Griswolds in Europe it is. (Don’t worry, Vacation ‘83 fans — I’ll write about it soon enough.)
Written by our old pal JohnHughes and directed by Amy Heckerling (Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Clueless), European Vacation follows the Griswold family — Clark (Chevy Chase), Ellen (Beverly D’Angelo), and their kids Rusty (Jason Lively) and Audrey (Dana Hill) — as they head off on a whirlwind [insert title of movie], which they won on the completely ridiculous game show “Pig in a Poke.” They make stops in England, France, Germany, and Italy, leaving a trail of injury, damage, and general confusion wherever they go.
This is one of those movies where I don’t think a plot synopsis would do it any justice. If you haven’t seen European Vacation, just know that it’s chock-full of physical humor and hilarious, quotable lines. One that my family and I still bring up if we’re out driving and we get lost and keep passing the same scenery is: “There’s Big Ben! And there’s Parliament!”
The Goonies (1985) is, hands down, one of my favorite movies of all time. I love it because of the sentimental factor — growing up in the ’80s, it played a huge part in my life — but also because it’s just a damn good movie. I’ve seen it hundreds of times now and it’s never tiresome, never a chore to finish watching. And unlike me, it never gets old.
As I’ve said before, I keep a mental list of movies I want to write about for this column but haven’t for one reason or another. Most of the time it’s because I haven’t yet been able to find all the songs on an out-of-print soundtrack album.
I decided to write about The Goonies this week not because its soundtrack is a rarity — at least not anymore, since Sony rereleased it last year (the score, on the other hand, is more difficult to find) — but because it’s a fun movie that I know a lot of you dig. It’s not an obscure ’80s film that only the most die-hard film geek — or kids whose parents stole cable, allowing them to watch all kinds of random movies on HBO and Skinemax when they should’ve been outside playing — would’ve seen back then. It’s a well-loved, iconic film that I’m pretty sure more people from my generation have seen than haven’t.
I swear I’m not being lazy. But self-indulgent? Okay, maybe a little.
So, I hope you enjoyed last week’s guest post by the lovely Scott Malchus. I also hope that you missed me and are delighted by my return. If you’re not, well, fuck you — I never liked you anyway.
I had considered writing about a space-related film this week in honor of the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission since I’m a giant space nerd. (If you follow me on Twitter, you are well aware of my geekiness and are likely totally sick of my NASA-related tweets.) But I changed my mind once I managed to finally piece together a fairly complete soundtrack for one of my favorite music-related films from the ’80s, Light of Day (1987).
I’ve wanted to write about this Michael J. Fox movie for several months now, after finding a near-mint-condition vinyl copy of the soundtrack album at Half-Price Books earlier this year. That led me to purchasing a used VHS copy of the movie, which is, tragically, not on DVD yet. But since (1) the soundtrack is out of print, (2) I don’t have a turntable I can use to rip my vinyl to digital, and (3) I’ve had a hell of a time finding MP3s of most of the songs elsewhere, I’ve been putting off writing about it, hoping to get it together one day soon. Finally, I have.
A couple months ago I was browsing around the vinyl section at my local Half-Price Books when I came across a near-mint copy of the soundtrack to Two of a Kind (1983), the film that reteamed John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John after Grease, the highest-grossing movie of 1978. Now, I know that when I wrote about Staying Alive(1983) last fall I was giving myself some shit for writing about a Travolta movie, and I promised myself it would be the only Travolta movie I’d write about. But when I found this soundtrack, I knew I’d have to break that promise. I mean, a movie like Two of a Kind is made for this column, don’t you think? And yes, I know it’s been brought up on Popdose before, along with its soundtrack, but it hasn’t been covered yet by me!
As with many of my favorite bad movies from the ’80s, Two of a Kind is one of those films I used to watch on cable all the time as a kid. I imagine it drew me in because of my love for Grease and Newton-John (”Physical” was my jam for much of 1982). I still have a soft spot for it, even though it is pretty terrible, but I prefer to think of it as one of those terrible-in-an-amazing-way movies.
About a month ago, while I was working on my Soundtrack Saturday post about Shag: The Movie, I tweeted that I never got sick of hearing Lloyd Price’s version of the blues folk song “Stagger Lee,” which is what Annabeth Gish and Scott Coffey’s characters dance to during the shag dancing contest at the end of the movie. In fact, I think I listened to it about 20 times just in the few hours it took me to write that post. The first time I’d ever heard any version of “Stagger Lee” was while watching Shag, and every time I hear Price sing it, I think of that scene and just want to put on my shaggin’ shoes and go to town. (Okay, so I don’t really know how to shag, but whatever.)
Seeing my tweet about my love for Mr. Price’s “Stagger Lee,” the lovely Jeff Giles asked if I’d ever heard the version by Chris Whitley & Jeff Lang. I replied that I hadn’t, and within the hour an MP3 was waiting in my in-box. After listening to it and telling Jeff how much I liked it, a discussion about some of the other versions of the song began, ultimately leading to the idea of this feature, which I hope continues with the thoughts of members of the talented Popdose staff on other oft-covered songs.
Now, much has been written about the Stagger Lee story and even about the many versions of the song; I’m certainly not going to try and rehash everything for you here. Instead I’d encourage you to read this and this, and if that’s not enough Stagger Lee history for you, there’s always Wikipedia. Rather, what I wanted to talk about here is what I love about the song and its many renditions.
As was the case with many people who grew up in the ’80s, John Hughes’s films were an integral part of my childhood and coming-of-age. And on August 6, when I read the news that he’d died suddenly of a heart attack, I was deeply saddened, not only because he was the first writer and director who really inspired me, but because the chance of one last really great 
So, I hope you enjoyed last week’s 
About a month ago, while I was working on my Soundtrack Saturday post about 